


Steal Me Awhile from Mine Own Company

by TrinityVixen



Series: Free Folk AU [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, F/M, beastiality, fair folk au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-29 17:29:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12089865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrinityVixen/pseuds/TrinityVixen
Summary: They are an unlikely pair in man's world. Among the Free Folk, they are an oddity to divide the realm. For the realm will fall before she lets anyone tear them apart.





	1. One.

****_Twilight lends a silver edge to the shadow of her shape in the darkness. The fire has gone out, neglected in favor of carnal pursuits still ongoing._

_“I owe you still a favor.”_

_“You owe me nothing. This is all the favor I would dare have of one of the Free Folk.”_

_“It is not a favor, this is the spoils of my victory. I have won you.” She drags her nails through his thick hair. “You’re mine.”_

_“You said you could not be kept.”_

_“But I can keep you.”_

_“Then what else could I want?”_

 

* * *

 

The return of the River Lady’s daughter is a subdued affair. One hundred years, the girl, now a woman in truth, walked man’s roads. In search of what became of her father, some say, though none in the River Lady’s hearing. Grand celebrations are in order. Instead, the huzzahs and hullabaloo never actually take off as the daughter returns accompanied by a beast the likes of which have not been seen in the Riverlands since their Lady banished winter thousands of years before.

In the temperate climate the Free Folk of the Riverlands have come to prefer, the animal should be panting, too hot to walk much less match the swift feet of his mistress. The direwolf—and there is no mistaking a wolf that walks shoulder to shoulder with one of their own as anything else—pads alongside the River Lady’s daughter with the surety of his kind, the knowledge that it could match threat for threat. It pauses only when instructed, when his lady holds up a hand to stay him as she marches the last yards to bow before her mother’s seat.

The River Lady’s throne is built of earth, grass, and the flowers for which her daughter is named, that sprang to life the same moment her daughter did. As befits the Lady of Waters, a stream bends improbably around to surround but never erode it.

“Hail, mother,” the daughter says, bowing her head, her arms stretched out in supplication.

In all things, the River Lady is stoic, regal, and severe—in all things, save one. The Free Folk finally find cause to celebrate in earnest and cheer louder than an earthquake as the River Lady abandons her earthen throne to take her wayward daughter in her arms.

“Welcome home, my love. My Red Daughter.”

 


	2. Two.

_ “Please,” he begs. _

_ She does not relent. “Ask me to make your dream come true, and I shall.” She rolls her hips once, the contrast between the stillness and the undulation of her body drawing another moan from him. She rocks against him once for each word. “Ask me and I will give you your dreams made real.” _

_ He fights for more than the slow, slick slide that she allows. He is losing his sense with each stroke, too lust-sick to argue. Instead, he pleads prettily as he comes apart. “Yes. Yes, my lady,” he pants, “Please. Make my dream come true.”  _

_ She releases him and he thrusts up into her. A compact sealed is as divine as the physical pleasure of coupling; the raw delight of both happening at once tears a scream from her throat. It is done. _

 

* * *

 

Beside her again, her lupine companion sniffs too hard at a pixie, who rewards him with a  _ zap _ to his sensitive nose. He jumps back, startling her mother. They have forgotten his presence, which, despite his size, is easily done for he has been quiet for all the many miles of their journey to this place.

Her mother appraises the direwolf with a shrewd eye. “Where in man’s lands did you find such a creature?” Not since the First Men have direwolves been seen and even then but rarely.

She smiles at her mother. “I did not find him. I made him.”

“Made him!” The Lady exclaims, scrutinizing the wolf anew. He is massive, as is to be expected of his kind, but his look is wild beyond even the reckoning of the Free Folk. His fur is shocking white, blinding like the reflection of the sun off of the water, but his skin underneath is the black of charred wood. It peeks out inside his ear, at the pads of his toes and the tip of his lethal muzzle. Stranger still are his eyes—crimson as fresh blood. All the magic of him resides in those eyes.

“It was a request,” she explains, settling her hand over his head and scratching behind one of his ears. The great wolf leans into her touch, licks her arm, and presses his face into her bare belly as she cradles his massive head. “From a man who kept faith.”

“There are men who keep faith?” Her mother purses her lips. “Unexpected. We have been gone too long from man’s world. I did not think any would remember.”

They pass a moment in peaceful, contemplative silence, walking among the River Lady’s favorite gardens, the swishing of the queen’s midnight blue gown the only sound for many miles. All the sprites and pixies, boggarts and bogies have fled, understanding their queen’s need for privacy. This is her mother’s holy place, as close to a temple as she has. In a temple, the silence might have continued. When they reach the center of the gardens, where her mother beds down on verdant grass and clover, questions must be answered.

Her mother sets her down to sit on a small knoll below where she herself settles. The direwolf hesitates until she beckons him, and then he comes to heel dutifully beside her crossed legs. Slight pressure on his shoulders, whispers in a dialect of man, and the wolf drops to its belly with its head in her lap. He licks a wet stripe across her navel, then closes his eyes, contented.

Her mother misses none of this. “You are much changed, my love,” the queen begins. “You did not always go about so—”

“Naked?”

The River Lady pulls a face to indicate her distaste. “Men cannot control their lusts when a human woman fully clothed is before them. Is it…prudent to tempt them with your flesh?”

She laughs, startling the beast; he withdraws his head from her lap to lay it beside her feet. She, in turn, rises and then drapes herself over his back. He is nearly as long as she is tall, and she can recline with ease along his broad body. Her mother speaks of propriety as if the Free Folk were known for their stock and trade in decorum. It is too funny.

“Is not that the point of me? Temptation? Is that not why I am shaped as I am?” She chucks her wolf under his chin to share her joy with him. He  huffs out a loud breath  and drops his great head to lay on his paws.

A twig snaps just then, bringing such merriment to an end when she spies her brothers. In front of a beast made from a man, her kind will never use true names. Even as she pokes fun at her mother, she adheres to these ways as she greets them.

“Eldest Son,” she nods to the tall, mostly man-shaped brother with a curt nod. But for her little brother, she has a true smile. “Hello, Black Brother.”

Black Brother leaps into the air, his ebony wings carrying him from his perch on Eldest Son’s shoulder to her outstretched fist. Black Brother favors the shape of a raven, the only one of her siblings to take on an animal’s form permanently. Eldest Son more resembles her; his hair only hints at the auburn of her own locks but they both have eyes as blue as glacial ice. 

“Red Daughter,” Eldest Son returns her courtesy as he takes his place behind their mother. “Mother is right. You are much changed, perhaps not for the better.”

She snorts, strokes Black Brother’s beak and lets him alight off her fist and onto the wolf’s head. Black Brother hops along to perch at the end of its snout then drops to inspect him all around like the curious fellow he is. She rolls to her belly and sits astride the direwolf’s hips. 

“I  _ am _ changed,” she agrees. Through her teeth, she whistles sharply, and the direwolf whips his head up and around to check on her. She leans her head to his, and his cold, wet nose settles between her breasts. She straightens as a swipe of his rough tongue draws one nipple into a taut peak.

“I am changed,” she repeats, seeing only the bloody eyes of her creature but imagining the brown ones behind them.

Eldest Son sneers, derisive. “You cavort with beasts now as well?”

She glares at her older brother. “My own kin finds fault in me. Men have violated me. But this beast has never done either. So yes, I  _ cavort _ with him.” As easily as she had amused herself at her mother’s embarrassment, she flies into fury at her brother’s condescension. She climbs off the wolf to stand and step to her brother until they are nose to nose. 

“If you wish to shame me, have the courage to say the vulgar words you are thinking. Go on.” When he appears confused, she enlightens him. “Ask me. Ask me if I fuck the wolf. Ask if I let him fuck me.”

Her mother ends the fight before it can begin with a sharp clap, the winds bent to her hands to magnify the sounds. Black Brother, who was pecking at the direwolf’s tail on the ground, squawks at the sudden breeze and takes to wing to land on the River Lady’s cupped hands. He settles, chest puffed and legs tucked under, utters one loud croak. Eldest Son retreats, as does she.

“No more of that,” the River Lady commands, casting a withering eye at Eldest Son and a pitying look at her daughter. “I am sorry you have felt such pain, my love. And we will love you, however you choose to be.” She hesitates, the pause giving her no insight on how to say something upsetting in a kinder way. “We accept you, but this creature cannot stay.”

“He is mine. This beast belongs to me,” she spits. The direwolf leaps to its feet, hackles raised. She knows the truth of her mother’s words—he does not belong here and, like as not, he knows it—yet still he will defend her.

“You said he was a man,” her mother corrects her gently.

“He is  _ mine _ .” Attuned to her temper, the wolf tenses the muscles of his powerful shoulders; his head hangs low and his claws dig into the earth.

Her Lady Mother glares daggers at this beast, and yet it is not cowed. She speaks to it as much as her daughter. “Men are not welcome here.”

“You entertained a man here,” she counters. “Else I would not be here, nor would my brothers or sister also.”

It is the exact wrong thing to say, she realizes too late. In the River Lady’s sunny gardens, clouds dare not trespass except to demonstrate the Lady’s displeasure. They gather now. She has overstepped. She braces for a reprimand or even an attack from Eldest Son.

And misses Little Sister entirely. Her rope shoots out to bind the neck of the wolf.

“No!” She screams as he snaps his sharp teeth at this tether, but his silent struggle is over almost as it begins. Little Sister wears many guises, and she has, from time to time, walked as a beast; she knows his instinctive attacks and retreats better than he does himself. He is trussed neatly before Eldest Son thinks to lay a hand on her. The fight in her disappears as Little Sister puts a foot on the wolf’s neck. Though she is slight, she could snap the bones there with a well-placed kick.

“ _ Please _ ,” she begs, not sure of whom she asks the favor. “Please do not harm him. He has done us no wrong. He has kept faith.”

Her mother rises, comes to her side, and pulls her, unresisting into her arms once more. For a sweet moment, she is a child again, the obedient beauty who resembles her mother in every thing. That safety she craves, however, is also a trap. She is held, yes, but fast.

“There, there, my love. Hush now. No man who has done you a kindness will ever suffer at our hands.” Her mother slips a hand beneath her chin, forces her head up so she must meet her gaze. “But he does not belong here.” She issues a command to Little Sister. “Return this creature to man’s world, where he belongs.”

Eldest Son and Little Sister haul the wolf away while she weeps and falls into darkness, Black Brother’s resounding calls ringing in her ears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't resist adding in Free Folk ideations of the Starks. I may have been a little too literal. I am also a sucker for "words have power" fantasy tropes.


	3. Three.

_ He sleeps, his skin flushed from their passion. It is easier this way, to weave the magics that grant his boon. There is no pain, no strange dissolve from one state to another. He opens new eyes as day breaks. _

_ “Come,” she beckons. _

_ He does. _

 

* * *

  
  


She wakes from sleep that was not of her own body’s choosing; the ozone taste of magic lingers as she shakes herself awake. She is covered with a robe of woven rushes and bedded down on a small island in the middle of a large stream. Beyond the reeds lining the island, she hears fish leaping at insects on the surface of the water. Little Sister sits, eyeing her intently, a few feet away. 

At once, memory slams her to full wakefulness. “Where is he? What have you-?”

“Relax,” her sister says, covering her smile with her hand. “He is fine.”

“Where—”

But she knows where when the reeds at water’s edge part and a soggy direwolf emerges from the stream, a fish caught in its jaws. Upon seeing her awake, he drops his catch back into the water, bounds over to her. She is bowled over by an arm-full of wet fur, laughs as he douses her with water and sloppy kisses.

“Eager fellow,” her sister says, sticking her tongue out at her. 

She releases him and he lopes easily back to Little Sister, bows his head to accept her hand as she scratches between his furrowed brows.

She is confused, to say the least, even as she is pleased. “Mother told you—”

“And since when have I ever done what Mother tells me?” Little Sister rolls her eyes. “He is a good one. I would keep him in my own pack, were he not already claimed.” 

Her sister’s smile turns teasing all at once. “ _ Do _ you fuck him? Tell me you do. Eldest Son was so prissy about that. He is as bad as Mother.”

She holds her chin high, unashamed. “I have.”

“As a wolf?”

She shrugs. “No, as a man.”

“Ah,” her sister shakes her head. “You should have him as a wolf. I have had wolves.”

She snorts, unable to help herself. “You have not.”

Her sister frowns. “I have been a wolf many times. Plenty of wolves have tried to mount me.”

“And you let them?”

“I have let one or two that I liked.”

“Liar.”

There is a tense moment, and then they are both giggling like mad.

“Alright, so I have not. I have been a wolf, though. I have seen how they mount one another. It looks like fun.”

She wraps her arms around her knees, smiles to encourage her sister. “Tell me.”

Little Sister has too much energy to merely tell tales; she does better to act them out. As she jumps up, so does the direwolf. Little Sister tackles him around the neck, wrestles him back down to the ground, bites at his throat and whines. He bats at her with his paws, slips loose of her hold and circles her as if in a dance. She should feel jealous of this play, this love that comes so natural between her sister and her wolf, but she cannot. It is too pure. They chase around while her sister, winded, describes the mating of wolves.

She is too lost in love with this display, she misses most of the story save the crude gestures. The gist of it is the same as most mating: foreplay, penetration, thrusting, completion. Wolves, however, stay tied together with the male turning around while still inside the female so they stare in opposite directions, the better to fend off any who would take advantage or attack while they are coupled. Her sister finds this detail fascinating, and she scarcely less so.

“They stand like that for a while.”

“For how long?”

“An hour, perhaps less.”

The direwolf has returned to her side, sneaking under her arm, raising his face to lick her cheek. She rubs his ear, tugs on it. “You have been holding out on me,” she chides him as she accepts another wet kiss.

Her sister makes to stand. “You are safe here for a while. Black Brother interceded on your behalf.”

This surprises her to no end. Black Brother hardly speaks, his mind long ago lost to his clever bird brain. “He convinced Mother to let me keep him?”

Little Sister shakes her head. “He invoked Obligation.” Her sister’s grin shows every last tooth. “He says your man ate food from your table and owes you time in service. If you reside here, he must fulfill that debt here.”

She thinks to protest, opens her mouth in doubtful confusion, which her sister forestalls with a hand. “Black Brother does not always think in lines, as we do. It’s possible the Obligation has not happened yet.”

And with that, Little Sister departs, leaving her alone to puzzle out the meaning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The mating habits of canids are weird, but exactly as described. :)


	4. Four.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the plot thickens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sex with animals is wrong, period. And yet, I wrote this.

_ The only sound he makes during their long journey comes at the start of it. He goes readily with her to the door, but he turns to look back at the man’s possessions he leaves behind. A soft whine issues from deep within him, a pained sound. _

_ “You won’t need them.” _

_ Nonetheless, she doubles back, touches each of his few belongings until he again whines as she settles her hand on the sword. This she takes with, and this time he follows without further complaint. _

 

* * *

 

She shrugs out of the woven palm robe and whips it open to lay flat on the grass. The sumptuous material feels harsh on her skin. She owes modesty to none, not even her mother while she resides in her mother’s realm. The wolf watches, belly on the ground and paws out in front, attentive but restrained. Too good, her creature. He is too good, and that is none of her doing as his shape is; whatever skin he wears, he remains the good man she met in a wood underneath.

“Have you heard of skin-changers, my love?” The white wolf cocks his head to the side, a comical gesture of curiosity. “Wargs, they call them, I think, where you are from.”

The wolf huffs once, which is a ‘yes,’ she thinks.

“Wargs are men touched by magic. Not as I am—not even as you are. Only men in truth, but men who have opened themselves to something more.” 

He is quiet, always quiet, and his silence invites her to fill the space with words. The tale spills out of her, like some long-forgotten, poorly-remembered story from when she was a babe. She has not any clue as to when this fairy-story took place, but her captive audience of one absorbs it all, without question.

The tale was this: once, skin-changers walked among the Free Folk. Once, when the River Lady had not sealed her lands against men. Only the First Men were wargs. The ones that followed after, the Andals, could never understand them. The First Men were already too much like the Children of the Forest, the Free Folk of the North, and the Andals did not trust the Free Folk. Wherever an Andal and his army encountered First Men or Children, there was slaughter, and the wargs were not spared.

“My father was a warg,” she confesses, and the wolf tilts his head once more, this time in apparent disbelief. “Yes, my sire was a man. My mother’s magic preserved him here, for a time, but he could not stay while his kind were slaughtered. For grief of his loss, she has hidden from man ever since." She screws up her nose, bitter with her next words. "Her sadness has calcified into intolerance. She cannot remember what she found worth loving in man.”

She shivers and traces one scar from the tip of her smallest finger up to her left wrist. A soft whine issues from her otherwise silent companion, the only sound he has made since the day he first walked as a wolf. When she stretches out her hand to him, he licks it, buries his nose in her palm to soothe her. He lifts himself up to come sit by her side, his paws stopping short of where her mother’s robe lay on the grass. He bends his great head to nuzzle her cheek, his tongue tasting tears that do not fall.

“There is plenty to regret in man,” she says, smiling at her wolf. “This scar was a present from a man who has forgotten the First Men of his blood. He thought to strip me of my skin to become a warg when he learned what I was. Not all men are worth knowing.”

She rises to her knees, encircles his throat with her arms and rubs her face in his fur. “But I do not regret you. I would keep you. I wish only that I knew how.” 

His snout burrows in her hair, and there is a tug as he seizes a lock of it in his teeth. She giggles, wetly, thinking of his obsession with her hair and how it has survived his transformation. He has no fingers to weave the strands around, so he takes it into his mouth. It reminds her of Little Sister’s tales of wolves mating, how the males bite and chase their females before mounting them. How the male sometimes will hold the female by the scruff of her neck as he enters her. 

He has not entered her as wolf. 

“Poor thing,” she coos, taking his ears in her hands and scratching them. “I have not made your dreams come true, have I?”

He retreats one step, the better add force as he butts his massive forehead against her own. Caught out in surprise, she falls backwards onto the outstretched gown her mother made to cover her lovely body. She rises to her elbows, knees bent, heart thumping in her throat. His mouth opens in a smile, tongue lolling out. It is a gesture to appease her. He does not mean violence. He proves it when he licks the inside of her knee, pushes it to one side with his chilly nose, and repeats the gesture with her other leg before backing off and shifting on his front paws, expectant.

“Oh,” she says, a laugh rollicking up from her belly. She reclines, stretches her arms above her head, and spreads her legs in invitation. “ _ Oh _ ,” she says again when his tongue invades much more sensitive territory on her body then slips inside of it. He had done such things to her with a man’s mouth, but the wolf’s tongue is longer, coarser. She writhes atop the beautiful gown she has scorned, defiling her mother’s prudish covering with the physical joy of what her creature does to her. 

Her cries send birds in the cattails to flight, their shapes hover as shadows high above her head as her back arches towards the sky. He pleasures her with his mouth, a delight made better for the wickedness of such coupling. She thinks of Eldest Son and the River Lady, her mother, the pair of them so easily scandalized for the Free Folk. Power has made them conservative in their ways. So much is their loss, and she would not trade the spiral of joy that tips her over into ecstasy for anything. She peaks, her entire body clenching with completion and rapture. Her body throbs and still he laps at her. She is halfway towards deciding to urge him away from her center when the sweet tension builds to a point where she must ride it to climax or retreat and be left frustrated and wanting. She is not one to deny herself anything.

When the stars fade from her vision, she rolls her head to one side, sated. He has trespassed onto the gown, heavy paws on either side of her body, unafraid of her mother’s finery. He tastes her flesh from her navel to her breasts, breathes hot upon her neck, raising goosebumps along her arms. His kisses on her cheek are as loving as those elsewhere are stimulating. 

He moves to bite down on her hair again, but she pushes him away. He retreats, denied and upset, stepping away from where he looms over her. “No,” she hushes him, grasping chunks of fur and skin over his thick shoulders to keep him from going far. “I just need room.” 

She releases him and he waits, dutiful, as she turns over to her belly and rises to her elbows and knees. The arch of her spine lifts her rear to meet the fur of his groin. She seizes a handful of her own hair and offers it to him, and then he is moving. He bites down, pulls until she hisses, then relaxes his hold. When next his body meets hers, it is not his belly against her backside but his member.

This is different than coupling with a man. Wolves sheath their members in a fold of skin, tucked away and kept slick. He is not so large as a man except at the base, which swells as he mounts her. He is enthusiastic, and she is not less so. He holds her hair in his mouth, close to the base of her skull, holds her in place while he thrusts into her. She moans, uninhibited and slightly bewildered at this strange mating she has so shamelessly encouraged. 

She howls as she peaks a third time and almost folds to the ground, spent. She cannot, however, as he is turning, in the way that wolves do, his member swollen and lodged within her although he is now facing away. He will stay like this, and she will stay on her knees while he does. An hour, sometimes less, Little Sister had said. This is how wolves make love, she told him once, but she had no idea then. Now she does, and she quivers with the enormity of her understanding.

Time escapes her as she waits for him to be finished with her body. She thinks idly on her family, of the half that heartily approves of her wantonness. Little Sister will be impressed that she followed through on what was assuredly a dare. She will find a way to fulfill the Obligation that Black Brother spoke of so she may have this pleasure repeated.

Thinking on her family brings less permissive members to mind. She is spiteful imagining Eldest Son’s derision if he were to see her, still enjoined with a beast. If there are gods, she prays that Eldest Son and the River Lady have heard her satisfaction this night. Let them know she has been taken by this wolf who was a man, who is still  _ hers _ in any form. Let them know, she prays, let them know he has lain with her and supped on her honey. 

Her honey. Somewhere far beyond the reach of her eyes, she hears a raven cawing, and it brings a smile trembling onto her lips.

She whimpers as her wolf lover slips from her body and collapses against the reed robe. There are holes in it now, from where he clawed the earth as he moved within her. She plucks at a long blade of grass that protrudes through one of these holes, laughs free and clear and loud as her wolf lays by her side. Their mating is done, and he comforts her after with his sloppy tongue and questing nose. She revels in these attentions, lays on her side to rest between his paws and tuck her head under his chin. 

“I have a plan, sweet one,” she whispers, stroking the line of his jaw. “I know how to keep you.”

He answers this as he usually does, with a slick scrape of his tongue along her cheek, a press of his cool nose to her neck and a  _ wuff _  of breath as he settles to sleep at her side. A wild thing, tamed to her hand. And now she would keep him.


	5. Five.

**Five.**

_ The sword burns her to hold, so she has to dispose of it quickly. It must be secured against a time when her man comes back to claim it. If she ever lets him. A wide river cuts through their path not a mile from the poor lodgings they have left behind. She wades out into it, diving straight to the bottom to lay it amongst the slick rocks of the river bed. _

_ She surfaces with a gasp, cold night air filling her grateful lungs.  _

_ “It is safe,” she promises. They continue on their way.  _ _ There will be consequences to her actions. She knows this. Where they are headed, there will be trials. There may be violence. The difference is that she does not have to face it alone. _   
  


* * *

 

 

Obligation has not been invoked since she before she was born. Her father was the last man to set foot among the River Lady’s lands, and he had been wise enough to escape this trap of the Free Folk. The Free Folk are known for their hospitality, for both its sumptuousness and its steep price. Had her father incurred Obligation, he might have spent the rest of his years belonging to the Lady of Waters and lived and died her servant instead of fighting the wars of his people.

Naturally, the invocation of Obligation after more than a century of the practice lying dormant brings out every clan in the Riverlands. This was not always the way. When Obligation was common sport with mortals, such pacts were between the Free Folk offering the food and the poor fools who bartered away their lives for one feast. Occasionally, feuding clans or even kin would interfere with one another, claiming that the price had been paid, or not, to justify Obligation in the first. Back before her father’s time in the Riverlands, stealing another’s mortal servant was a game played often and to great amusement.

Those days seem about to come again, so instead of settling the matter between family, this new case of Obligation invites a conclave to assemble before the River Lady’s lush garden throne. Every elf and gnome, kelpie and nymph, selkie and will o’wisp turns out to hear the River Lady’s Red Daughter invoke a tradition long since lost to them all. 

The Lady of Waters wears a gown of deepest gray, and the skies above her match the color. Foul weather has not yet left the clouds above, but storms hover just in the future. None of the assembled multitudes doubt the Lady’s mood. Theirs is much more jovial. The Free Folk love good sport.

Beside the throne of the queen of the Free Folk stand her children, all save two. Eldest Son mirrors his mother in his severe attire, standing stiffly in a tunic dark like rain-wetted stone, a quiver of birch-branch arrows on his back and a yew bow in his one hand. Little Sister espouses none of his self-imposed rigidity, lounging instead at her mother’s feet and swinging an insolent foot back and forth. She wears earthen tones and soft leather boots, ready to sprint and run as soon as the business is concluded. Fierce Child, the River Lady’s youngest, is curled in her lap, turned toward her breast, the drape of one of her sleeves wrapped around him. He sleeps or else he would not be so calm; he is not known as Fierce Child for nothing.

The last two children respond to the wave from their mother to approach. She feels stronger for having Black Brother on her outstretched arm, since she cannot have her creature at her side. The direwolf sits a few yards off to her left, taut and alert; a faun is tasked with guarding him. He is not restrained, a concession won from the queen with no small argument. It broke her heart to see him tethered at Little Sister’s hands; she could not bear such a miserable sight twice. The faun she recognizes as an old favorite of her mother’s, and she mistrusts the way his hand lingers on the beast’s neck. She bows before her mother, but her eyes linger on her wolf.

The River Lady claps her hands, and thunder issues from the clouds overhead. Eldest Son steps forward to make his mother’s will known to the assembly.

“We are here to settle a matter of Obligation,” he intones. “A mortal walks in our lands and it is said he has partaken of our food.” 

Although all present know the mortal of which Eldest Son speaks, heads crane to see the white wolf at the front of the crowd. Susurration, wind and whispers both, is ended with another imperious clap from the Free Folk’s queen. 

Eldest Son asks, “Who claims his debt?”

“I do,” she calls out as she rises from her display of courtesy. “Red Daughter, daughter of the River’s Lady, claim his debt is to me.”

“Step forward, Red Daughter,” her mother invites, her tone icy and forbidding. “Bring forth the man.”

The faun saunters forth, his hand on the back of the direwolf’s head to propel the creature forward. “This is even he, my queen,” the faun says in the sing-song manner of his kind. Fauns are, by nature, rhymers, but he adds no further lyric. It marks him an oddity, and that does not sit well with her.

“This creature cannot answer to his debt as he is,” the River Lady says, frowning. “Will you change him back so that he may do so?”

She shakes her head. “I have made him what he is with magic from a boon granted. I would be in his debt if I tried, my queen.” It was its own sort of Obligation. To reverse such magics would leave her still owing him a favor, and as a man, he could give voice to his price. “And I know his wish if I should rescind my gift.”

“Which is what?” Little Sister asks, giving all the appearance of indifference. She would, for she knew the answer.

“He wished to keep me as his woman in the world of men.” 

Chittering percolates through the crowd with this statement. It had been Black Brother’s suggestion, this gambit. She did not, truly, know what he would request in place of the shape he now wore. She knew only that, in the heat of passion, he had expressed his desire to keep her, so it was not a lie to say as much to her mother. Black Brother has bound her mother in a logical noose: if she demands the mortal address her, she risks losing her daughter to him, but if he cannot speak, he cannot deny his Obligation as her mother would wish. 

“That is a favor too far for any man to ask, your Grace,” the faun chides her. 

“Tell that to the Selkies,” she counters, and several of their clan bark in mournful and outraged approval. She turns back to her mother. “It is no more than the Obligation we ask of men when they receive a favor of us.”

“But we are not mere men,” the faun says placidly, which only stokes her anger at his intrusion on this discourse. 

“Enough,” her mother interrupts before she would speak again. She glares at this faun, lets him know with all the fury her face can muster that, no matter the judgment here today, she will make him suffer for his insolence. The insouciant creature smiles at her and pats the direwolf on the head. Were he not forewarned about the consequences of threatening actions, she imagines her wolf would have happily torn that hand from its owner’s body. The wolf’s gaze, also turned upon this interloper, is no less fierce than her own.

“Proof,” her mother says. “We need proof of this man’s Obligation. If he cannot speak to it, we have only your word, my daughter.”

“Has my word lost its value, my queen? Do you take me for a liar?” She cannot keep petulance out of her voice. It does not help her cause to sound as if a child scolded, but it wounds her to be so distrusted. 

“Admit at least that it’s unlikely you speak the full truth here,” Eldest Son says. 

“We are the Free Folk,” she mutters. “Do we speak the full truth anywhere?”

Her mother holds up a hand when Eldest Son would speak again. “No games, daughter of mine. No riddles spoken to your queen and mother. Your brother wonders, as we all do, as to where in man’s lands you would have had food or drink from this realm to offer. You took nothing of ours with you when you left. This is known.”

“I took myself, mother.”

Eldest Son rolls his eyes. “Have you turned your pet man into a cannibal, then?”

“No,” she shakes her head.

“Then what Obligation would you have of him?”

Her answering grin is beautiful and terrible. “Why, that he owes me for the honey he drank from between my legs, sweet brother.”

The entire glen erupts in a cacophony of dissonant exclamations. Baudy japes are shouted out from amongst some of the kelpies, most of them encouraging on her side. The dryads, virginal in mind if not always in body, gasp in horror. Sneers of derision issue forth from the gnomes, none of whom profess an interest females of any stripe. Nymphs exclaim with glee and flock closer to the direwolf, soliciting his favor in return for Obligations to them. The faun swats angrily at the boldest of these, irritation at last cracking his imperious façade.

Better still are the reactions of her brothers and sister. The din wakes Fierce Child; he scatters from their mother’s seat, hissing at the interruption of his slumber. Little Sister pulls a face, sticking out her tongue and pretending to gag. Eldest Son flushes crimson from his nose to the tips of his pointed ears. This last reaction she savors most of all. 

“You cannot be serious,” Eldest Son says, aghast.

“I am, perfectly. This man has supped from my body, and gladly did so. He owes me for the favor.” 

Eldest Son goggles at her, but the faun is swift to argue while her brother struggles. “Some would say you owe  _ him _ for such favors, Red Daughter.” Several of the Free Folk snigger with this pronouncement.

“Pleasure was exchanged,” she admits. “At least on that score, we are already settled.” One or two nymphs whistle shrilly, whoop with joy at her clever rejoinder.

The faun is dogged. “Yet you would claim a pleasure of a different kind measures to Obligation?”

She shrugs. “Perhaps he would have thought to ask for better terms if his mouth had been available to do so.”

The wailing laughter that greets this repartee is louder still. The Free Folk revel in the exchange of wit. Nymphs call out praises to her, beg her to be claimed as one of their own. Their joy lifts her spirits, which might otherwise fail under the stern gaze of the River Lady.

“You see fit to make mockery of our laws, my daughter,” her mother warns. “You wish to obscure the weakness of your claim with your licentious words.”

“My claim is strong,” she disagrees. “A man that tastes of the food of this land owes a debt to the one who provided it. This man has tasted me. The verdict is clear: either I am of this land, and he shall stay with me, or I am not, and we shall leave it.”

“Not without proof,” Eldest Son insists. “You will not let us ask the man, so we have only your word.”

“Not hers alone,” Black Brother caws. 

Little Sister jerks her chin at her brother. “You mean to say you have seen this man’s Obligation, brother?”

Black Brother’s voice is rough from years of disuse. “I vouch for my sister. Her man owes her, as she says.”

“Never!” The River Lady shouts, voice hoarse with indignation and edgy with encroaching defeat. “It cannot be so.”

“It is so,” Black Brother replies, speaking only as much as ever he needs to.

“Black Brother has the Sight,” Little Sister says. “We cannot argue with it.” Despite her protest, her mother seethes because she knows this to be true. Even Eldest Son bites down on his tongue to keep from objecting to the truth out of sheer obstinacy.

“We can,” the faun says sweetly.

Not she alone but all her family level harsh, affronted gazes at him for speaking so. A great hush smothers the tittering of the Free Folk. Black Brother is known for his silence as much as for his Sight. He does not speak often, but when he does, his pronouncements are heeded for they come to pass. Moreover, to question his vision is not only folly but insult to a prince, and by extension, his mother. She holds her breath in hope that he will be seen to overstep and in fear that he will find the words to weave dissent where accord should reign among her family.

Bowing his head, affecting obsequiousness, the faun says, “Forgive me, my queen, I would never doubt a true vision from your son. I would only question whether his loyalty to his sister overcomes it. It would not be the only time love has blinded a third eye.”

The Lady of Waters wears a stormy expression to match the skies overhead. She does not countenance her children to be gainsaid by any of her subjects. Yet her interest in the outcome mitigates her instinct to silence this rebellious member of her realm. In the end, it is Black Brother she rounds on, not the faun.

“Is this so, my son? Do you mislead us here for your sister’s sake? Would you trade on our faith in your ability to secure her lover a place in my lands?”

Black Brother’s chest puffs up mightily and he flaps his long wings, ruffled as though offended. “Everyone knows I have the Third Eye. What everyone forgets is that I also have two others. And I can fly.”

She grins at her brilliant brother, bends her arm closer to her body to run her fingers over his smooth feathers. “What he means, mother,” she says with furious joy, “is that he saw my man oblige himself to me. Here, in your home.” 

If any of the Free Folk dislike this development, their dissent is lost in the raucous laughter all around the clearing. It is everything they cherish in a conflict--salacious behavior, wit, and now surprise. The nymphs are beside themselves, and the bravest of these begin a chant that begins to silence all other speech:  _ Obligation! Obligation!  _ None of the Free Folk like to be seen to be on the losing side of an argument, so the chant takes wing until nearly the entire clearing is calling for their queen to concede.

The faun does not appear deterred by the tide turning in her favor and attempts to argue, but the River Lady claps her hands twice and thunder answers her each time. Wind whips around the gathering, and the air is heavy with the long-denied rain. The chanting ceases, and she holds a breath waiting for her mother to speak.

“The claim of Obligation,” her mother begins, chagrin twisting her mouth in a pained frown, “appears to be met. This man belongs to my daughter until his debt is paid.” 

Pandemonium. The shouts and jeers and questions blend together into meaningless noise. With the River Lady’s summary judgment declared, the faun has no cause to hold back the direwolf. The moment his hand is off the wolf’s neck, the beast dashes towards her, sending Black Brother up into the sky as her arms are full of white fur. His intimate greeting, all tongue and nose and touch, escapes no one’s notice. The cheers of  _ “Obligation!” _ shift from petition to demand, as if her mother’s people were encouraging him to taste her right now in front of them all. 

The clouds finally release the rain. Too long denied the childish delight of a sweet summer storm, the Free Folk caper about and sing songs. Some, she imagines, will be written this night about the Red Daughter and the day she brought both man and rainfall back to the Riverlands. For now, she clings to her wolf.

While the rest of the Free Folk are distracted, the faun weighs in once more. “And when will the Obligation be met, my queen?”

She answers for her mother, a feral smile stretching from ear to ear as she rounds on this faun. “That will depend if he is intent on incurring further debt.” The direwolf chooses this moment to place his head to her breast, and she holds him there. “I suspect he is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I confess this entire sequel was sparked by a tumblr post where people debated back and forth the issue of whether or not blowing a faerie left you in his debt or he in yours. I didn't see why it should be any different if that faerie was a woman.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to Past the Wit of Man. I had actual story business to continue what was essentially a PWP fic bunny. There will, of course, still be smut later.


End file.
